Q: What is the best recording of the Walton viola concerto?
A: Music Minus One.

Q: What is the difference between a viola and a trampoline?
A: You take off your shoes before you jump on the trampoline.

Q: What is the difference between the first and last desk of a viola section?
A: Half a measure.

Q: What is the difference between grapes and a viola?
A: You take off your shoes to stamp on grapes.

Conductor: Again from measure 5, if you please.Voice from viola section: But Maestro, we have no measure numbers.

Q: What is the difference between a chainsaw and a viola?
A: If you absolutely had to, you could use a chainsaw in a string quartet.

Q: What do you call a person who plays the viola?
A: A violator.

Q: What is the difference between the first and last desk of a viola section?
A: A semi-tone.

Q: Why are violas so large?
A: It is an optical illusion. It's not that the violas are large, just that the viola player's heads are so small.

Q: What do you call the folks who hang around the musicians at conservatories?
A: Violists.

Q: What is the difference between a dog and a viola?
A: The dog knows when to stop scratching.

Q: Why can't you hear a viola on a digital recording?
A: Recording technology has reached such an advanced level of development that all extraneous noise is eliminated.

Q: What is the definition of a major seventh?
A: A violist playing octaves.

Q: How is lightning like a violist's fingers?
A: Neither one strikes in the same place twice.

Q: Which positions does a violist use?
A: First, third, and emergency.

Q: Why are orchestra intermissions only twenty minutes long?
A: So the violists don't need to be retrained.

Q: When a 16-inch viola and a 17-inch viola are dropped simultaneously from a 30-story building, which one hits the pavement first?
A: Who cares!

Q: How do you get a viola section to play spiccato?
A: Write a whole note with "solo" above it.
Fight between the musicians
At a concert hall one night, the stage manager comes across an oboe player and a viola player having a fight.

He breaks the fight up and asks what the fight was about.

The oboe player says, "He broke my reed! I was just about to play my big solo when he broke my reed!"

"Well?" says the stage manager to the viola player. "What do you say to that?"

In umbrage, the viola player replies, "He undid two of my strings but he won't tell me which ones!"
Musicians on a sinking ship
A violist and a cellist were standing on a sinking ship together.

"Help!" cried the cellist, "I can't swim!"

"Don't worry," said the violist, "just fake it."
Make me a better musician
There once was a violist playing in the Winnipeg Symphony. He wasn't that wonderful a player, so he sat at the back of the section. One day, he was cleaning out his attic and discovered an old lamp. He gave it a rub and out popped a genie.

"For letting me out of my lamp, I'll grant you three wishes!" he said.

The violist thought for a moment and replied, "Make me a far better musician than I am now."

The genie told him that this would be done. He was to go to sleep and in the morning, he would be a much better musician. The next day, he woke up to find himself the principal violist of the symphony. Well, this was just great, he thought! But he knew he could do better. He rubbed the lamp again and out popped the genie.

"You have two more wishes!" he said.

"I want you to make me a better musician than I am even now!"

Once again, the genie told him to go to bed and when he woke up, it would be so. When the violist awoke, he found he was now the principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic. Well, the violist thought this was pretty grand, but knew he could do better yet. He rubbed on the lamp again and once more out came the genie.

"This is your last wish." the genie said.

"I want you to make me yet a better musician still!"

Yet again, he was told to go to sleep. The next morning, he woke up to find himself back in Winnipeg, sitting in the last desk of the second violin section.
The insane conductor
A violist comes home late at night to discover fire trucks, police cars, and a smoking crater where his house used to be.

The chief of police comes over to him and tells him, "While you were out, the conductor came to your house, killed your family, and burned the house down."

The violist replied, "You're kidding! The conductor came to my house?"